Selectel Client Success Stories

Client Success Story: Site Manager

The most important thing we get is peace of mind. If there’s an electrical problem, they have backups; connection problems, there are backups. If something urgent pops up on our servers, their high-quality tech support resolves it. This is why we use and recommend Selectel to our clients: with you, everything is going to work quickly and reliably, and it always will.

Pavel Pushkarev

Manager, Site Manager

Site Manager

Business

Site creation system

Requirements

Storage of heavy static data

Service and critical point monitoring

CDN for clients abroad

Reliable high-performance equipment

Solution

Cloud Storage

Monitoring

CDN

Dedicated Servers

Results

Over 10 000 commercial clients

Improved connectivity

Uninterrupted operation

Background

Site Manager is an online store builder and subdivision of the St. Petersburg corporate group ARTW. As the service’s creators see it, individuals wanting to set up an online shop have two options: order a site from a agency (which means being ready to pay a few million rubles and really working your patience) or use a service with ready-made solutions.

With Site Manager, you can load content onto your site, add products, and quickly get your business online—all from an interface, which is as easy to use as any social network, and without any programming. Users don’t waste their time or money on making work orders, designing their shop, programming, or setting up the host.

Task

The Site Manager platform was developed in 2004. The site was initially called Site Builder, but as time went on, the creators began to shift towards eCommerce, which is why they decided to focus on online stores. Any small or medium-sized business can create a functioning shop from scratch in a week. The technical setup takes about a day; more time is spent writing product descriptions, filling out the site, and advertising—things you can’t have sales without. Investment in this kind of online shop comes to about 10 000 rubles a year, and visually, it won’t be any different from major retail sites. Despite the fact that the service is called an online store “builder”, it’s actually more like a professional system. The creators also feel that Site Manager is the ideal platform for testing new business ideas.

To ensure Site Manager is constantly operating at the necessary level, its hosting provider needs to provide a reliable connection, space for storing client content, and a way to monitor its services.

Selectel’s Solution

The service has to distribute a lot of static content for thousands of sites---a task our Cloud Storage is well suited for. To work with clients abroad (such as in Europe), Site Manager uses the content delivery network (CDN) to transfer data quickly and without any lag. Our Monitoring system helps track the site’s (and clients’) services and critical points. After every check, a detailed report is compiled about the services’ availability and status from different points around the world.

The ARTW corporate group also includes an online agency that works on major eCommerce solutions. When the agency develops a major portal or store that requires powerful and reliable equipment, it looks to Selectel.

Acting on friends’ recommendations, the organization began working with Selectel in 2013. The service’s management noted “two pillars” that their cooperation rests on: its technical support, which is fast and accurate (the Site.Manager employees appreciate that support “responds casually and gives the impression that it really wants to help”), and uninterrupted operation.

Results

The project has already attracted over 10 000 clients, all of whom are commercial (Site Manager doesn’t have any free options). In 2014, the creators launched a new and improved version of the service.

Now Site Manager’s management is looking into virtualization; they’re testing the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and researching the economic benefits of transferring (it’s more expensive to use the private cloud instead of personal equipment, but this lets them manage resources as they see fit and avoid having to change equipment).